Buick Riviera concept car is revealed Friday, April 19, 2013, on the eve of the Shanghai Auto Show in Shanghai, China. / Nathan Bomey/Detroit Free Press

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Detroit Free Press Business Writer

Free Press Business Writer Nathan Bomey is covering the Shanghai auto show this weekend. Come back to freep.com for his stories, photos and videos showing the wide array of vehicles competing in the world’s largest car market.

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SHANGHAI — If statistics don’t convince you that China is now the world’s largest auto market, the scene here at the 15th Shanghai International Automobile Industry Exhibition will.

Pack 10,000 journalists into a convention center the size of a small planet, mix in some ear-throbbing, American pop songs, strap a few trapeze artists to the ceiling and you’ve got more visual stimulation than the Detroit and New York Auto Shows combined. And that’s before they let in the public.

Oh, yes. There’s a heavy presence of military police, random wait staff walking around offering glasses of orange juice, a model strolling the floor in a wedding dress and bicyclists soaring into the air off a ramp.

One Chinese automaker featured the long-retired “NBA on NBC” theme song and the “NFL on Fox” soundtrack during its news conference, although it’s unclear why.

But this is no joke. This is the largest auto sales market in the world — and for all of quirks, make no mistake: Automakers can’t afford to get this wrong.

“People still worship a car” in China, said Yale Zhang, managing director of Automotive Foresight Shanghai.

Many companies will swing and miss.

With more than 100 automakers in China, this is a bit like the U.S. auto market in the years immediately after World War II.

Annual sales now exceed the U.S. market by about 5 million vehicles. Then consider that only about 6% of Chinese consumers own a vehicle, and these experts forecasting annual sales of 30 million or more new cars by the end of this decade don’t seem crazy.

There are risks. The government wants to reduce the number of Chinese automakers to between three and five companies that can compete on a global scale.

There are too many car companies. The show has ballooned into 17 massive indoor exhibition halls spanning 280,000 square meters and featuring 2,000 exhibitors with about 1,300 vehicles. It’s obvious they won’t all last.

“There’s going to be a natural consolidation of OEMs in China over time,” said Steve Merkt, head of the automotive business for auto supplier TE Connectivity.

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Perhaps because the market moves so quickly here, details about product plans and investment road maps were hard to come by at the show. To describe their vehicles, automakers unleashed a stream of superlatives that would make Noah Webster proud.

One important aspect of China’s auto market was quite clear during the news conferences: Young people dominate this market.

Dieter Zetsche, chairman of Daimler, said in an interview that the average Mercedes-Benz buyer in China is about 40 years old.

For Chevrolet, it’s about 35, said Richard Choi, director of Chevrolet marketing in China.

The average new vehicle buyer in the U.S. is two decades older.

In the U.S., the auto industry is desperately trying to convince young consumers to get interested in cars. In China, that’s not a problem.

Which is why news conferences at the Shanghai auto show have a youthful flavor.

Mercedes-Benz hired bicycle riders to perform stunts on the stage to introduce its new GLA concept crossover.

To promote the Chevrolet Cruze hatchback, which reaches China later this year, GM channeled a strategy that worked well in the U.S.

It reprised the band fun.’s “We Are Young,” the Grammy Award-winning song that GM featured in a 2012 Super Bowl commercial for the Chevrolet Sonic. Curious onlookers gaped as MoMo Wu, a singer on the Chinese version of “The Voice,” burst onto the stage to belt the tune.

Make no mistake: GM wanted to send a very specific message by reviving the song to promote the hatchback.

Even Cadillac, whose average Chinese buyer is 34 years old, emphasized youthfulness in its news conference.

Several models sporting stylish handbags strode around the stage while a singer crooned Kelly Clarkson’s “Catch My Breath.” GM was promoting the Cadillac XTS, which recently arrived in Chinese showrooms, and the Escalade Platinum

“That was a very dramatic launch and fashion show,” proclaimed the Chinese host for the Cadillac news media event.

Think of the Shanghai Auto Show as a mashup of “Project Runway,” a Super Bowl halftime show and the Grammys: nothing succeeds like excess.

Economic growth may be slowing, but automakers’ party is still going strong.